"'For his bride a soldier sought her,'
"'For his bride a soldier sought her,'
why should he have looked so straight atme? It was not an impertinent look, I own, but why should he have looked at me at all?"
But even to her own heart, Lady Vera will not own that her great vexation is directed against herself because she has blushedvividly crimson under that one look from Captain Lockhart's blue eyes, while her heart has beat so strangely—with annoyance, she thinks.
"I foresee that I shall hate this American soldier," she muses, "and no wonder at all when I shall be forced to see him every day. I wish now that we had not accepted Lady Clive's invitation for the London season."
The day after Lady Ford's ball dawns cheerlessly. It is cool, and the air is full of floating mists. The gentlemen determine to go out anyhow. The ladies elect to remain at home. The glowing fire in the library has more charms than the bleak, spring air.
"I am not surprised at Nella," says Captain Lockhart, leisurely buttoning his overcoat. "Shewas raised in America, and our ladies do not walk much. But I have been told that English ladies walk every morning, whether rain or shine. Are you false to the tradition, Lady Vera?"
The color flies into her cheek at his quizzical glance, but she will not tell him what she sees he does not know—that she has been raised in America, too.
"I suppose so," she says, a little shortly, in answer to his question.
"Suppose you come with us for a turn around the square, my dear?" suggests the earl.
"So I will," answers Lady Vera, determined to have Captain Lockhart see that she is quite English in her habits.
She comes down in a moment covered almost to the pink tips of her ears in rich velvet. To her dismay Earl Fairvale strolls forward in a fit of absent-mindedness with Sir Harry, leaving her to be accompanied by the American soldier. She sees no other course but to accept the situation.
"It is only for a few minutes at the worst," she thinks to herself.
So she walks on by his side, looking so pretty with the nipping wind kissing her cheeks into a scarlet glow, that Captain Lockhart can scarcely keep the admiration out of his eyes.
"The loveliest girl I have ever seen in my life," he mentally decides. "But, by Jove! as cold and proud as an iceberg!"
"So you do not like Americans?" he says to her, regretfully, as they turn a corner.
"No," curtly.
"Ah, but, Lady Vera, is that fair?" plaintively. "You do not know us, yet you condemn us without a hearing. Mere English prejudice—is it not?"
She looks around at the handsome face, full of fire and life, and the sparkling blue eyes. The thoughtful gravity on the lovely face grows deeper. The dark eyes flash.
"Captain Lockhart, you are talking of what you do not understand," she says, impatiently.
"I beg your pardon, Lady Vera," he answers, flushing, "I spokefrom the merest impulse. I thought—since you are so very young—you could not know my country well."
Lady Vera blushes, but holds her peace. Of course, somebody will tell him her story soon—tell him that her mother was American, and that she herself had spent seventeen years in his own native land. At least he shall not hear it from her. She has a vague notion that it would please him to know it, that the blue eyes whose sparkle she has already learned to know, would light with pleasure at the knowledge.
Those eyes, how bright and keen they are. They seem to read one's thoughts. Lady Vera finds her gaze drooping from them as they never drooped before mortal man's before. Why? she asks herself.
"It is because he is so bold," she decides, vexedly. "He seems to be trying to read one's inmost thoughts. I will show him that I am not afraid of him."
Thereupon she lifts the dark eyes bravely to give him a cool society stare, but in an instant they waver and fall before the glance they have surprised in his. Just so the blue eyes had turned on her last night, when he sang:
"On the banks of Allan Water,When the sweet spring tide did fall,Was the miller's lovely daughter,Fairest of them all!For his bride a soldier sought her,And a winning tongue had he,On the banks of Allan WaterNone so gay as she."
"On the banks of Allan Water,When the sweet spring tide did fall,Was the miller's lovely daughter,Fairest of them all!For his bride a soldier sought her,And a winning tongue had he,On the banks of Allan WaterNone so gay as she."
"Why do you stare at meso?" she breaks out, angry with herself, and with him.
He flushes, startled by herbrusquerie.
"I beg your pardon—I did not mean to be rude," he answers, quietly. "But, Lady Vera, a man must be blind not to look atyou."
"Why?" she asks, still sharply.
"Because I think God made all beautiful things for the pleasure of men's eyes," he answers, firmly, yet respectfully.
"Impertinent!" Vera says to herself, indignantly, and looks another way.
"Do you lay an embargo on my eye-sight as far as you are concerned, Lady Vera?" he continues, after a moment.
"Yes," she replies, with her head still turned away.
"Then I shall try to obey you," he answers, calmly. "I will not even see you when I can help it, but you must forgive me for saying that if I should never see you again I shall never forget a single line of your face."
"I hope he is not making love to me," Lady Vera says to herself, uneasily, then laughing at herself. "Of course not; I dare say he has a sweetheart in his own land, some dear, sweet, angelic creature, like Ivy Cleveland, perhaps."
They speak no more, and when they have gone once around the square, Captain Lockhart leaves the earl's daughter at thedoor with a low bow. She goes into the house, her cheeks tingling with an odd kind of shame.
"I was rude,perhaps," she thinks, a little uneasily. "What must he think of English manners? But then why did he look at me so? I felt so—so strangely."
To Lady Clive, who is trifling over a bit of fancy work, she says, presently:
"Why did you not tell me you expected your brother?"
Lady Clive glances up under her long lashes at the flushed face, a gleam of mischief in the blue eyes so much like her brother's.
"It was just like me—to forget it," she exclaims. "But then I knew you would not be interested. And, besides, I knew he would not be in your way. Phil is only a plain, blunt soldier—not at all a ladies' man."
"I thought he seemed likethatlast night," Lady Vera answers, turning the leaves of a book very fast, and not knowing how ambiguous is her answer.
"Likewhat?" her friend inquires.
"A ladies' man," Vera answers.
"Did you? Oh, yes, when he is thrown among them he tries to make himself agreeable, but he does not fall in love, he does not run after them. When he was with us last season, Lady Eva Clarendon made a dead set at him. Phil was very civil at first—sang with her, danced with her, played the agreeable in his careless way, you know. But when he found she was losing her heart to him, he drew off, terrified—seemed to think she would marry him, willy-nilly—and went away to Italy, then back home."
"I should have thought it would have been a grand match forhim," Lady Vera answers, with unconscious emphasis of the pronoun.
Lady Clive's head goes up, slightly.
"Formybrother? Not at all, Lady Vera," she answers, with a slight touch of stiffness in her voice. "Philip met the Clarendons on equal ground. He is wealthy—that is the first and greatest thing with people, you know—our great-uncle left him a fortune. Next, he is well-born, and the general, our father, is famous over two continents. As for Lady Eva's title, that would not weigh a feather with my brother. He comes from a land, you know, where native worth and nobility take precedence over all."
And having thus blandly squelched Lady Vera's arrogance, the American lady bends smilingly to her lace work again. Lady Vera only smiles. She cannot feel offended.
"I deserved it all," she thinks, soberly to herself. "Oh! why do I suffer my hatred of the Clevelands and Leslie Noble to make me venomous and unjust to every American I meet? I have offended this kind friend of mine, and been rude to her brother all through my spite against those wicked people. I wish he would forgive those ridiculous words I said to him. Not look at me, indeed. How silly! He will think me wondrous vain."
But Captain Lockhart does not forget. When they meet at dinner again Vera glances at him shyly several times across the silver and crystal and flowers, but the blue eyes are always on his plate, or on someone else's face—never on hers. What though she is lovely as a dream in pale-blue satin and gleaming pearls? Captain Lockhart is serenely unconscious of the color of her robe, or the half-repentance in her starry eyes.
"I cannot blame him," she admits to herself, "I acted like a silly child."
The days go by, Captain Lockhart and the earl's daughter are merely civil—they seldom seem to see each other. Each absorbed in the engagements of the gay season, each drifting further apart in the whirl, there is no time for pardon or reconciliation. Lady Vera finds no time for the nursery now save when the soldier is out. Yet she is ever listening for one step, and the color flies into her cheek when she hears it.
Lady Clive is perplexed and sorry because her brother and her favorite do not take to each other.
"I thought they seemed made for each other," she complains, to Sir Harry. "And I thought I had managed them so cleverly. But they scarcely seem conscious of each other's existence."
"I hope you are not turning match-maker, Nella," Sir Harry Clive replies, laughing.
Earl Fairvale sees nothing. Day by day he grows more gloomy, more self-absorbed, and goes less into society. The only interest in his life outside of his adored daughter, centers in the occasional letters that reach him from America. But after each one he grows more sad and gloomy, losing flesh and color daily. Only Vera knows that the vengeance that is the object of his life is so long delayed that the strain on his mind is killing him. For though the most skilled detectives in the world are watching and working, they can find no trace of the secure hiding-place where Marcia Cleveland dwells untroubled by the vengeance from which she has fled.
Lady Vera's roses pale when she sees how her father is breaking down—how the mind is wearing out the body, even as the sword wears out the scabbard.
"Father, even if you found out her hiding-place, what could you do? What form could your revenge take?" she asks him, mournfully, as she has done many times before.
"I cannot tell—but some way would be opened. I should find some vulnerable point at which to strike," he answers, moodily.
She twines her fair, white arms about his neck, and presses her fresh young lips to his clouded brow.
"Father, this long brooding over your revenge, this hatred, nourished in your heart, is sapping your life," she sighs. "I beg you, for my sake, to give it up, dear father. Give it up, and leave it to Heaven!"
He looks at the beautiful, tearful eyes and the sweet face, pale now with its sorrow.
"Vera, you come to me with your mother's face, your mother's voice, and ask me not to avenge her ruined life, her broken heart, her mournful death," he answers, bitterly. "Child, you knownot what you ask. What can you know of the pangs I have endured? Have you forgotten, too, the indignities heaped upon you in your young, defenseless life?"
The dark eyes filled with smouldering wrath.
"No, father, never!" she cries; "but it is all past. Mother is safe in Heaven, you and I are together. Let us forget those wicked ones. Surely God will punish them for the ruin they have wrought."
"I will not listen to you, Vera," he says, putting her from him, resolutely. "I have sworn to break Marcia Cleveland's heart if it be not made of stone. If I fail—listen to me, darling—if I fail, I shall bequeath my revenge and my oath to you in dying."
She pales and shivers through all her slight young frame, as if some dim foreboding came to her of the nearing future—that future in whose black shadow her feet already tread, it comes so near.
"I shall bequeath it to you," Earl Fairvale repeats, gloomily; "you will lack no means to accomplish it if only you can find out the serpent's lair. You will be Countess of Fairvale. You will inherit great wealth, and an enormous rent-roll. With wealth you can do almost anything. If I fail you will take up the work where it dropped from my hand in dying—you, Vera, will avenge the dead."
One of Earl Fairvale's favorite amusements was riding on horseback. He had a passion for fast horses. He might often be seen mounted on some spirited and superb animal, riding in the "Row" by his daughter's side, who was herself a finished horsewoman.
Sometimes he drove a four-in-hand. Often he might be seen tearing along at a wild and break-neck pace on some fiery-looking horse that ordinary people would shudder to look at. But the earl did not know the name of fear. He seemed to take a reckless delight and gloomy satisfaction in those wild, John Gilpin-like races, at which others trembled with dread. He laughed at the fears of his daughter and her friends, and disregarded their entreaties.
Sir Harry Clive came home one day, his fine face clouded with anxiety.
"The earl has bought a new horse," he said. "It is a beautiful creature, black as night, glossy as satin, clean-limbed, superb, but with the most vicious eye conceivable, and a fiery temper. They call him King."
"I suppose there is no danger to the earl," said his wife. "He has a marvelous control over his horses. They seem to obey the least touch of his hand or sound of his voice."
"This animal he has now is not like to be tamed so easily," Sir Harry answers, gravely. "It is said that he threw his last master and killed him. Indeed, Nella, you could not imagine a more devilish-looking creature than this beautiful King. I toldFairvale that its true name ought to be the Black Devil, for I am sure he looks like one."
Lady Clive shudders.
"Has the earl tried him yet?" she inquires.
"He started out upon him an hour ago," Sir Harry answers. "There were a score of us who tried to persuade him not to mount the fiery creature. But he laughed at our fears, and went off in gallant style. King tried to prevent him from mounting, but he succeeded in first-rate style. Yet I doubt," gloomily, "if he ever returns alive."
"What will Lady Vera say? She has been so anxious over him, so nervous of late," sighs Lady Clive.
"You need not tell her," he answers. "No need to alarm her needlessly. After all, our forebodings may be vain. Fairvale is the most fearless and accomplished rider I ever saw. He may even conquer King."
But even then the loud and startling peal of the door-bell rings like a wild alarm through the house.
Sir Harry's fears have had only too good a foundation. They have picked up the earl from the hard and flinty pavement, where the maddened brute had flung him, and brought him home bleeding, senseless—mortally injured, all the surgeons agree.
And Lady Vera? The shock of the awful tidings had almost rent her heart in twain. Passing from one swoon into another, she lies on her couch, white and horror-stricken, shuddering sighs heaving her breast. At last they come to tell her that the awful stupor is over. He is conscious, and has asked for her.
"How long?" she asks, faintly, for they have told her that his hours are numbered.
"Calm yourself, for he cannot bear the least excitement."
But when Vera goes into his presence, and sees him lying so marble-white, with the black hair tossed back from the high, pale brow, and the eager, asking eyes fixed upon her anguished face, a great, choking knot rises into her throat—it seems as if she will choke with the violence of her repressed emotion.
"Father!" she wails, with a world of grief in that one word, and falls on her knees by his bed-side.
"I am going from you, dear," he answers, with the strange calmness of the dying. "The black river of death yawns at my feet. The pale and mystic boatman is waiting to row me over. Already the cold waves splash over me. Vera!"
"Father," she answers, placing her hand in the cold one feebly groping for it.
His hollow, dark eyes roll around the room.
"Are we alone?"
"Alone," she answers, for all the kindly watchers have withdrawn, leaving father and child to the sweet solace of this last moment together, undisturbed by alien eyes.
The dark eyes seek hers—sad, wistful, full of vain remorse.
"Vera, I was reckless, mad, defiant of fate. I have thrownmy life away, my poor, blighted life. Can you forgive me, my poor, orphaned girl?"
Only her stifled sobs answer him.
"I did not mean it, Vera. I was tormented by my burning thoughts, and I only sought diversion. I thought I could hold the fiery brute in check. But the devil threw me. No matter; I am to blame. I was too reckless. But you forgive me, darling?"
She kisses him because she cannot speak.
"I have lost my life," he murmurs, sadly; "lost it before my work on earth was done. My daughter, you recall what I said to you so short a while ago?"
She shivers, and lifts her dark, foreboding eyes to his face.
"Yes, father."
"Bring me the Bible from yonder stand, dear. You must swear a solemn oath."
The beautiful young face quivers with nameless dread and fear.
"Oh, father," she prays, with lifted hands and streaming eyes, "leave it to Heaven!"
The dark eyes, fast glazing over with the film of death, grow hard and stern.
"Vera, child of my martyred wife, will you be false to your father's dying trust? Will you refuse to obey his dying commands?"
"No, father, no," she weeps.
"Then place your hand on this Bible, my darling."
Silently she obeys him, the pale, chill light of the waning day glimmering in on her ghost-like, pallid face, and the dark eyes full of pain and despair.
And the voice of the dying man rises strangely on the utter stillness.
"Swear, Vera, swear by all your hopes of happiness, that you will punish Marcia Cleveland through her dearest affections, that at any cost to yourself you will avenge your mother's wrongs!"
A gasp; the words die on Lady Vera's parched tongue.
"Speak, my little countess. Repeat my words," he urges, anxiously.
With a terrible effort she murmurs them over:
"I swear, by all my hopes of happiness, that I will punish Marcia Cleveland through her dearest affections; that at any cost to myself I will avenge my mother's wrongs!"
She glances down at the loved face for his smile of approval. An icy hand seems to clutch her heart. Her father has died as the last words left her lips—died with a smile of triumph on his marble-white face!
One piercing cry of anguish, and the Countess of Fairvale falls lifeless across the still warm body of the dead.
Long days of illness for Lady Fairvale follow upon the tragic episode of her father's death.
Nights and days go by like utter blanks to her, with onlyslightly recurring intervals of consciousness. It has been a great shock to her, this swift and terrible rending apart of the last filial tie earth holds for her. Near kindred she has none. Her father's death has seemed to leave her utterly alone on earth. It is true there is some distant cousin and heir-at-law who would, no doubt, take it as a favor if she would die and leave him title and estates, but him she knows not.
"There is no one living who has the least claim upon my affection," she thinks, forlornly, to herself that day, when, with agonized heart she bends to press the last farewell kiss on her father's marble lips; but even with the words a sudden memory stabs her heart and crushes her senseless to the floor with the silent whisper of one name—Leslie Noble!
That feared and dreaded name has power to blanch poor Vera's cheek and drive the blood from her heart at any moment.
"What if, dazzled by my wealth and title, he should come and claim me?" is her dreadful thought, never dreaming of that stately monument in fair and flowery Glenwood, on which Leslie Noble has caused to be inscribed the simple name of:
"VERA,WIFE OF LESLIE NOBLE.Died, —— —th, 18—; aged 17."
thus trying to atone to the dead in some slight measure for the pitiful, unmanly cowardice that had driven her desperate.
But after that terrible brain fever, that great struggle between the opposing forces of life and death, Vera lies still upon her couch with wide, dark eyes that look out from her small, white face drearily upon the world—the great, wicked world in which, though she has so much wealth and power, she cannot claim so much as a single true friend.
"Unless Lady Clive be one," she muses, "and—and," but then she stops, and takes herself to task because she has so strangely thought of Captain Lockhart just then.
"Where can he be?" she wonders. "Perhaps he has taken himself off to livelier quarters. The house must have been as dull as a tomb while I lay so ill. I wonder if Lady Clive will ever forgive me for spoiling her 'season' like this."
She propounds this latter question gravely to Lady Clive herself, who responds with an encouraging smile, and the gay little answer:
"I will try."
But when she sees how pale and wistful is Countess Vera's lovely face, she folds her in her arms and kisses her.
"My dear, do not give a thought tothat," she says. "There is nothing to forgive, believe me. I am very glad that you were with us when you fell sick. I have nursed you with all the love and tenderness I could have given a sister."
Why should Countess Vera's heart beat so fast at the thought of being Lady Clive's sister, and why should her pale cheeks flush, and the grateful words falter on her lips?
"We all love you," her friend goes on kindly. "The children have been dolorous over you. 'When will Vera come and see usagain?' they ask every day. Have you looked at the pretty bouquets they sent in for you this morning?"
Lady Vera smiles assent. Fresh flowers are brought to her room every morning, and they tell her the children send them. But there are only three children, and always four bouquets. Vera asks no questions but she knows that the fourth one is always the largest and sweetest. To-day it is of crimson rose-buds, mixed with heliotrope and pansies, for there is always some blending of her favorite flower.
"You do not know how much we miss you from our home circle," the charming Lady Clive resumes, vivaciously. "You must not leave us when you get well, dear. Make your home with us until you get settled for life. You will be so lonely if you try to live alone with a chaperon. Won't you promise to stay?"
"I will think of it," Lady Vera answers, gratefully, while tears rise to her dark eyes.
Lady Clive comes to sit with her often, sending away the prim nurse, and installing herself in her place. She chats vivaciously, retailing bits of society gossip, telling of all the great people who have left cards of condolence for the young countess, of the lovers who are alldesolesover her illness; of Sir Harry's regret and the children's clamorous despair. But, strange to say, she utterly forgets the existence of her brother, Captain Lockhart, or, perhaps, deems the subject uninteresting to her guest.
He has gone away, Lady Vera tells herself; yet she, in some vague way, feels that he has not. She hears a step in the hall outside her door sometimes—a manly step that is not Sir Harry Clive's, but which has a firm, remembered ring in it that has power to send the warm blood flying from her heart to her face.
When she is well enough to sit up in her white dressing-gown, lying back in a great, cushioned arm-chair, the children are admitted to see her. They spend a noisy five minutes with their friend, then the nurse bundles them out, closing the door on their clamorous tongues, but not so quickly but that Countess Vera catches Mark's disgusted dictum in the hall:
"Oh, Uncle Phil! Vera isn't a bit pretty any more. Her face is all white and thin, and her eyes aresobig."
So he is here. Her subtle intuitions had been right.
Impulsively she turns to the prim old nurse.
"Open that door, and ask Captain Lockhart to come in here."
He comes, eager, smiling, filled with wonder, yet outwardly calm.
"You are very kind; you permit me to share the children's treat," he says. "May I——" then he pauses, confused.
"Look at me? yes, do," she says, crimsoning painfully. "I want you to tell me—is it true what Mark said—that I am not pretty any more?"
The blue eyes meet hers with the old, strange look that always made her heart beat against her will.
"Mark is a little dunce," he answers, smiling. "He has no eye for anything but roses. I assure you, Lady Vera, that you are as beautiful in your pallor and delicacy as you were in health.More beautiful to me," he adds, his voice falling slightly lower "because now you are kind."
"Kind!"
She arches her dark brows slightly in surprise.
"Yes," he answers. "Did you not know how I have been longing for a sight of your face, Lady Vera? But I dared not ask, and now you allow me to see you of your own free will. You cannot guess how much I thank you."
His voice trembles with feeling. The countess, blushing in spite of herself, tries to make light of it all.
"I did not think ofles proprieteswhen I called you in here," she stammers. "My vanity was so alarmed by Mark's terrible speech that I forgot everything. I think you must go now."
But he lingers.
"Won't you come down into the library?" persuasively. "We could all amuse you there. You could lie on the sofa with a warm shawl over you, and we would read aloud to you, or sing, or play—whatever pleased you most. It must be dull for you here with your sick fancies. Will you come?"
What an atmosphere of cheerfulness he has brought into the sick-room.
Lady Vera's heart that has lain numb and chill, and hopeless in her breast so long, seems to warm itself to life again in the sunlight of his smile.
"I will go, if Lady Clive thinks it prudent," she declares.
Lady Clive—that astute general—on being consulted, puts on the gravest face over her well-pleased mind, and declares that Lady Vera may venture to-morrow, perhaps, and so gives Captain Lockhart twenty-four hours of the pleasures of anticipation, which philosophers declare exceed those of reality.
With to-morrow begins a love-idyl, one of the sweetest ever enacted, perhaps, and the most innocent, for Lady Vera is unconscious of it all, nor dreams that love is near. Captain Lockhart is no bold nor intrusive lover. He does not weary Lady Vera with his company or attentions, oftener than not leaving her to the companionship of his sister. But when he enters the room it is always brighter for his coming; when he reads, the volume gains a new interest; when he sings, she lies with closed eyelids, and wonders why she had ever fancied she would dislike this pleasant, agreeable gentleman, with his handsome face, his scholarly mind and chivalrous manner.
"It is very pleasant having such a friend," she thinks, within her innocent, unconscious heart. "I was so lonely losing dear papa, and having not one true heart to turn to in my sorrow."
A remembrance of her oath of vengeance comes into her mind, and a troubled look sweeps over the fair, young face. It weighs upon her like a burden—the legacy of hate her dying father has left her. How shall she ever keep her vow?
"Shall I go to America and seek my enemies who are so securely hidden away that even detectives cannot find them?" she asks herself. "Or shall I lie passive and wait? and when found, how shall I strike Marcia Cleveland's cruel heart?"
Alas! poor Vera, if you only knew the dreadful truth. If youonly guessed how, in wounding your enemy's heart, you must fatally stab your own, you might pray to die now while the pulses of life are low, ere life became a living death. Well for us that:
"Heaven from all creatures hides the book of fate."
"Heaven from all creatures hides the book of fate."
And the pretty idyl goes on. Lady Vera's morbid thoughts are drawn out of herself, and lifted to a higher plane by Philip Lockhart's cheerful, active mind. The weeks round into a month, and she is almost well again. The color and roundness of youth have come back to her cheek, the light of a strange, new, unconscious happiness is dawning in the darkness of her eyes.
Far away from the spot where Countess Vera broods over her oath of vengeance, in far America, away in the green heart of the langourous south, is the white marble palace where Mrs. Cleveland and her daughter dwelt, hidden from the knowledge of the man they had wronged, and who had sworn to bring home to them the ruin they had wrought.
To-day, a lovely morning in the autumn of that summer in which the Earl of Fairvale died, Mrs. Cleveland comes out on the piazza of her stately southern home, with a frown upon her brow. Behind her, in the magnificent saloon she has just quitted, high words are raging.
"You never loved me, or you would do as I wish you," wails the weak voice of Ivy to her husband, as, dissolved in tears, she flings herself upon a costly sofa.
"I begin to think I never did, but all the same you and your mother have ruined me by your cursed extravagance. I have not a thousand dollars to my name in bank. This place will have to be sold and we can live on the proceeds a little longer, perhaps," Leslie Noble answers, in a sharp, high-pitched voice, as he strides up and down the floor, cursing within his heart the weak fancy that had led him to marry this shrewish creature.
"Ruined! I do not believe one word of it!" Mrs. Noble breaks out, starting up and glaring at him with her pale, blue eyes. "It is a falsehood you have trumped up to keep from taking mamma and me to Europe where our hearts are just breaking to go! You know very well we have not spent a fortune in the little year and a half we have been married. We couldn't have done it."
"Wehavedone it, anyhow," he answers, sullenly. "It was no difficult manner, considering the way in which you and your mother have forced me to live. Furniture fit for a palace, jewels costly enough for a queen, entertainments costing thousand of dollars, recklessly repeated over and over. We are at the end of the line at last, and you may yet have to take in washing for a living."
"You brute!" she exclaims, flashing him a glance of wrath and scorn. "To begrudge us the pleasant time we have had! I did not know you could be so mean and stingy! Of course I knew that your bachelor uncle in Philadelphia—the one you are namedfor—would leave you his money when he died. I wish he would die now. He's mortally slow about it. I should think he must be a hundred years old."
"Good God, Ivy! what a heartless and mercenary woman you are!" her husband cries, stormily. "That poor old man, my uncle, who never harmed living soul, how dare you wish for his death? Upon my soul, I am tempted to write to him to leave his money to some orphan asylum or art gallery just to disappoint your hopes."
"You would not dare!" she sobs, hysterically.
"Try me too far, and see what I will not dare," he answers, threateningly, and she stops her sobbing and looks up, fearfully, at the dark, handsome face bent sternly upon her with two smouldering fires in his gloomy black eyes.
It is not as handsome and refined a face as Leslie Noble could boast of two years ago. There are lines of dissipation on it. There is a certain hardness and coarseness upon it, as if engendered by ill-nature and the free indulgence of evil passions. Association with such a woman as Ivy Cleveland would naturally bring that look into a man's face. Coarse, selfish, and unprincipled herself, she has dragged the man's weak, easily-moulded nature down upon a level with her own.
"When I married you, Ivy," pursues Mr. Noble, "I desired to take you to Europe on a bridal tour, but you and your mother, for no earthly reason that I can imagine, declined to go. You refused my offers to take you to my own home in Philadelphia, preferring, as you said, the sunny south for a home. Now you have changed your minds, and declare American life monotonous and unendurable, and fancy you would like to figure in the courts of Europe. You had just as well cry for the moon. You have recklessly dissipated your own property and mine, and must bear the consequences. I cannot afford to take you abroad, and I do not desire to be badgered about it any longer."
"You shall hear about it day and night until I get my wish," Ivy cries, with passionate defiance. "Sell this house and all our fine furniture if you choose. It will bring enough with what you have in bank to afford us a brilliant season in London. Then by the time we return old Noble will have died, perhaps, and left us his fortune."
"Did I not tell you I will not have Uncle Leslie's death counted on so coarsely?" cries Mr. Noble, furiously. "You are a perfect harpy."
"And you are a brute!" Mrs. Noble retorts. "Aren't you ashamed to call your wife such names? and you pretended to be in love with me when you married me, you cruel, unfeeling wretch!"
"You dropped your mask as soon as I made you my wife, and showed me what you really were," Leslie Noble answers, with bitter anger and scorn. "I was only a tool for you, and a stepping-stone to power. Your mother's money was well-nigh exhausted, and you married me so that you could squander mine. Then, too, you have the most horrible temper in theworld. Do you think any man could continue to love such a woman?"
"How dare you talk to poor, dear Ivy so cruelly?" Mrs. Cleveland exclaims, stepping back through the low, French window, and glaring at her son-in-law with tigerish hate in her keen, black eyes. "You have frightened her into hysterics, you unfeeling wretch!"
"I would thank you not to interfere between me and my wife," he answers, stung to defiance by the insolence of both mother and daughter. "You have always thrust yourself into my affairs. You have been the power behind the throne and moved Ivy like a puppet at your will. I wish to Heaven you would go away and leave us to fight our own battles. It would be something to be rid of even one of you!"
A scream of rage from Ivy, who proceeds to roll on the floor in violent hysterics. Such scenes as these are of frequent occurrence, but Mr. Noble has seldom spoken his mind so plainly, especially on the subject of his mother-in-law. There is no telling what might have happened, for Mrs. Cleveland looks furious enough to spring upon the offender and rend him limb from limb, but at this moment there appears upon the scene a messenger with one of those yellow-covered envelopes which carry joy or sorrow to so many hearts.
"A telegram," Mr. Noble exclaims, and tears it hurriedly open.
As he reads, a look of sorrow, strangely blended with relief, comes out upon his features. His wife, forgetful of her sham hysterics, springs up and regards him, intently.
"A telegram! From whom? And what does it mean?" she exclaims.
"It is from my lawyer," Mr. Noble answers, bitterly, "and it means that the devil takes care of his own so well that you will be able to gratify your latest whim. My uncle is dead and has left me his whole fortune."
"Glorious news!" Mrs. Cleveland and her daughter echo with one accord.
Some hints of autumn are in the soft, warm airs that blow through the smoke and heat of London. The fashionable season is over, and the gay butterflies of fashion have begun to seek "fresh fields and pastures new." Lady Clive begins to think of flitting with the rest.
It has been settled that the Countess of Fairvale shall remain with the Clives for the autumn and winter months at least. She is in mourning for her father, and is quite settled in her mind at first that she will go home to her ancestral castle and spend the period of retirement in strict seclusion with a proper chaperon. But the Clives will not hear of it. Lady Clive is afraid that she will mope herself to death.
"Besides, I shall be so lonely," she declares. "Philip is going back soon to his own home, and we shall have no young peoplewith us at all if Lady Vera leaves us, too. My dear, do say that you will stay. We are not going to be very gay this season. Sir Harry and I want to take the children down to our country home, where they may roll in the grass to their hearts' content. Let us invite two or three sweet young girls, and as many young men, to go down with us, and we can have such a charming time, with picnics and lawn tennis, and simple country pleasures. Then, after awhile, we will go to Switzerland and climb the Alps. What say you, my little countess?"
Lady Vera, so ardently pressed, yields a gentle assent, and the party of "sweet, young girls" and eligible young men is immediately organized, Captain Lockhart promising to go down with them and remain a week before he returns to America.
So in the late summer they go down to Sunny Bank, as the Clives call the large, rambling, ornate pile of white buildings that is the sweetest home in all Devonshire.
The children go mad with delight over the fragrant grass and the autumnal flowers. The young people begin to pair off in couples, and one day Vera goes for a walk with the American soldier.
She is looking her fairest and sweetest. A dress of soft, rich, lusterless black drapes her slender figure superbly, and the round, white column of her throat rises lily-like from the thin, soft ruche of black around it, her face appearing like some rare flower beneath the shade of her wide, black Gainsborough hat. No wonder that Captain Lockhart's dark blue eyes return again and again to that delicately lovely face.
"It is no wonder," said the lords,"She is more beautiful than day."
"It is no wonder," said the lords,"She is more beautiful than day."
They walk slowly down the green, country lane, bordered with oak and holly. The flowers are beginning to fade, and the air is sweet with their pungent fragrance. The sky is deeply blue, with little, white, silvery clouds sailing softly over it. The sun is shining sweet and warm as if it were May. Little birds are singing blithely for joy as if the spring-time had come again.
"Do you know that this is the first time I have walked by your side since that day last spring, when you were so cruel to me?" he asks, breaking a long interval of silence that has been perilously sweet.
"Cruel?" she says, lifting to his the half-shy gaze of the dark and dreamy eyes.
"Yes, cruel, for you forbade me even to look at you," he answers, smiling now over that past pain in the eager elation of the present. "Ah, Lady Vera, you did not know then, perhaps, what a cross you laid upon me—that I loved you even then so dearly——"
"Hush!" she cries, in such a startled voice that he pauses and looks around to see what has frightened her.
"What is it, Lady Vera? Has anything alarmed you?" he asks her, anxiously.
"Nothing, but that I am tired. I will sit down here on this mossy log, and rest a moment," she answers, sinking wearilydown, a sudden paleness chasing the roses from her cheeks. Captain Lockhart throws himself down on the short, velvety, green turf at her feet. There ensues a short silence, broken only by the hum of the busy insects, the song of the birds, and the soft rustle of a passing wind in the leaves overhead.
There is some embarrassment in their silence. Her cry of alarm has been so sharp and sudden that he does not know how to return to the interrupted subject. And yet his heart is so full of it.
He looks into the lovely, spirited young face, and he cannot keep the words back any longer.
He turns to her suddenly, and tells her the story of his love in burning words, whose eloquent fire brooks no check nor remonstrance. His face glows under its soldierly brown, his blue eyes darken with feeling, his voice trembles with passion, but when he pauses, Lady Vera, who has heard him through with tightly clenched hands and a strangely blanched face, can only falter:
"You love me, Captain Lockhart? I thought—that we were only friends."
The frightened, wondering voice falls like ice upon his heart.
"Only friends," he echoes, "when I have loved you since the first hour I saw you. Oh, Lady Vera, do not grow so pale! Is it strange that I should love you? Others have been as wild and presumptuous as I have. Others have come down before the fire of those dark eyes, slain by their beauty. I know you have been cold, indifferent to all, even to me at first. But when you thawed to me at last, when you were kindly and friendly——"
"Yes, that was all," she interrupts him, in a kind of frantic haste. "I was kind and friendly, that was all. I meant no more, believe me."
The soldier's blue eyes look at her with a keen reproach before which her own glance wavers and falls.
"Lady Vera, you are no coquette," he exclaims, "and yet I could swear that you have given me encouragement to hope that you would love me. Do you remember the beautiful poems of love I have read to you, with my very heart on my lips? Do you remember the songs I have sung to you, and the dreamy twilights when we sat and talked together? Do you remember how you have worn the flowers I brought you? You have blushed and smiled for me as you did for no other, and you are no coquette. Oh, my darling, surely you will love me?"
As he talks to her, the color goes from white to red, and red to white in her beautiful face. Her lips quiver, the tears spring into her eyes.
"You are blaming me," she says, incoherently, "but you have no right. I know nothing of love. I thought we were only friends. I am so sorry."
"Do you mean to say you do not love me, that you did not know I loved you, and was seeking you for my wife, Lady Vera?" he asks, with forced calmness.
"Yes, I mean all these things," she answers, looking at him with such wide, frank, innocent eyes that he can find no room for doubt.
He is puzzled for a moment.
"I have deceived myself," he sighs, inly. "I thought she was learning to love me."
"Lady Vera, I have been too hopeful," he says, manfully. "I have been thinking of love while you dreamed only of friendship. But now that you know my heart, will you not suffer me to woo you for my bride? I love you so dearly I am sure I could make you happy."
Ah! the fathomless pain that comes into the dark eyes into which he gazes so tenderly. He cannot understand it.
"I shall never marry, Captain Lockhart," she answers, in a low, pained voice. "There is no use to woo me. I can never be yours."
"Never!" he echoes, with despair in his voice.
"I shall never marry anyone," she repeats, mournfully.
He looks at her with all his passionate heart in his eyes.
"Never is a terrible word, Lady Vera," he answers sadly. "Only think how I love you. I have never loved anyone before in all my life, and I shall never love anyone again. You are my first and last love. Only think how terrible it is, how cruelly hard, for me to give up the hopes of winning you for my own. You are so beautiful and noble, my dark-eyed love. I have dreamed of kissing your small, white hands, your fair, white brow, your golden hair, even your beautiful, crimson lips. I had thought to win you for my very own, and now you strike dead every hope by that cruel word,never. Oh, my darling, you are too young to say you will never wed. What can you know of the needs of your own heart? Let me teach you to love me."
"Ah, if he only knew the fatal truth," the tortured young heart moans to itself, in the silence of its great despair. "If he knew that I am already bound by a tie that I hate and loathe."
But she speaks no word, only to look up at him with pained, dark eyes, and reiterate:
"I am very sorry I have caused you pain, Captain Lockhart, but I shall never marry."
He rises and looks down at her with his handsome face grown strangely pale and grave, his blue eyes dim and heavy.
"So be it, Lady Vera," he answers, folding his arms across his broad breast. "You know what is best for you, but, ah, lovely one, if you could know how sweet were the hopes you have slain this hour you could not choose but weep over my saddened life."
She put up her white hand imploringly.
"Forbear, Captain Lockhart. You cannot guess what pangs are aching in my breast or you would spare me your reproaches. Be pitiful and leave me."
"Not here," he says, looking up and down the flowery lane. "Let me take you back to the house, Lady Vera. We cannot trust these autumnal skies. It may rain at any moment."
"As you will," she answers, wearily, and rising, retraces her steps by his side. But this time they speak no word to each other and the fair young countess flies up to her room, and flings herself down on her couch to weep such tears as have neverrained from those lovely eyes before, for a great happiness and a great sorrow have come into her life, as it were, together.
"For I love him," she moans to herself. "I love him, but as Heaven sees me, I did not know it. It all came to me like a flash when he was telling me how he loved me. Oh, God, what happiness is possible to me, and yet beyond my reach."
She lies still weeping bitterly, and recalling in all its bitterness that midnight marriage by the side of her dying mother.
"Oh! what a blind mistake it was," she weeps. "But for Leslie Noble I might marry the man I love. I might go back to America with him. I might tell him the story of my oath of vengeance, and he would help me to find my enemy and punish her for her sin."
The day drags wearily. In the afternoon Vera goes down to the library in search of something to read. Gliding softly in she finds it tenanted by Captain Lockhart, who is busy over a fresh batch of papers from the United States. He glances up as she is about withdrawing, and springs to his feet with courteous grace.
"Pray do not let me frighten you, Lady Vera. I will take my budget of papers, and be off," he exclaims.
"No, I do not wish to disturb you," she answers. "I am in search of something to read myself."
"Pray take your choice from among my papers," he replies, gravely, but kindly, and half-listlessly Lady Vera turns them over and selects one at random.
Captain Lockhart places a chair for her and returns to his reading, thinking that the best way to place her at her ease. His heart yearns over the beautiful, pale, suffering face, but he does not dream of her sorrow, and he has no right to comfort her, so he turns his glance away, and, looking round again a little later, sees that Countess Vera has quietly swooned away in her chair, and that the American newspaper has slipped from her lap to the floor.
With a startled cry that brings Lady Clive rushing into the room, he springs to his feet. Lady Vera's swoon is a long and deep one, and they wonder much over its cause, but no one dreams that the American newspaper has caused it all. Yet the listless gaze of the unhappy girl roving over the list of deaths in a Philadelphia paper has found one line that struck dumb, for a moment, the sources of life in their fountains. It was only this:
"Died, at his residence on Arch street, on the 19th instantLeslie Noble."
Lady Vera waking from her long and death-like swoon, wakens also to a dream of happiness. The terrible incubus that weighed upon her so heavily is lifted from her heart. The loveless fetter that bound her is snapped asunder. Leslie Noble, whose very name has been a shuddering horror to her for more than two years, is dead, and she is free—free! What exquisite possibilities of happiness thrill her heart at the very thought!
She keeps her room that evening, pleading weariness as an excuse for not appearing at dinner. She wants time to think over the joyful change in her prospects before she meets Captain Lockhart again. She is scarcely herself now. Such a strange, tremulous, passionate happiness is thrilling through her heart as makes her nervous with its intensity. Little shafts of fire seem thrilling through her veins. Love, which she had thought never to experience, has taken up its dwelling in her heart, and every nerve thrills with its unspeakable rapture.
"And I was so blind, I thought it only friendship!" the fair young countess murmurs to herself, with a happy smile playing around her lips. "How happy he will be when I tell him that I love him, and that I will be his wife! It cannot be wrong for me to marry him. I am sure he will help me to my vengeance when I tell him of the oath I swore by my father's death-bed. Dear Philip, how grand and handsome he is! He is the noblest of men!"
Lady Clive, having privately questioned her brother as to Vera's fainting fit, and received no satisfaction, is at her wits' end! Why this terrible swoon, when she had deemed Lady Vera well and strong again?
She wonders even more when the young girl appears at breakfast the next morning. Never had the young countess appeared so enchantingly lovely. Clothed in a delicate, white morning dress, with purple pansies at her throat and waist, and all her glorious golden hair floating loosely about her perfect form, with a blush of happiness on her cheeks, and the shy light of tenderness in her splendid eyes, it seemed to all as if her peerless beauty had received a new dower of glory. All wondered, but none knew that the threatening cloud that had overshadowed her life so long had rolled away, and that it was the new light of hope that made her face so radiant.
"You look unusually well, my dear. There is no trace of your illness left this morning," Lady Clive exclaims, with her usual charming good nature, as Lady Vera glides into her seat.
A blush and smile of acknowledgement from the young girl. She glances shyly under her long lashes at Captain Lockhart, who is hervis-a-visat table. But the handsome soldier, after one slight glance and a courtly bow, does not seem to see her. Miss Montgomery, who sits next him, absorbs his attention this morning. She is a belle and beauty, and has long angled for Captain Lockhart. Seeing Lady Vera so gay and smiling, he resolves not to damp her pleasure by a sight of his own grave, troubled face, so he lends himself assiduously to the coquette's efforts to amuse him, succeeding so well in his plan that she is completely blinded, and murmurs to herself with sudden bitterness:
"He is flirting with Miss Montgomery to show me how little he cares for my rejection. Ah, well, if he is satisfied, I am!"
So the first seeds of pride are sown in her heart by a coquette's petty arts.